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Punjab Violence Eases as Police Claim Successes

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Heavily armed policemen stormed a comfortable villa in this crowded city in early August and captured India's most wanted Sikh militant.

A few hours later, the police announced that the arrested man, Sukhdev Singh Babbar, who had posed successfully as an affluent builder here for four years, was dead.

The circumstances of his death are still unclear. At first, the police said he was killed in a gun battle outside the city. Now the police say that he was unarmed and that he killed himself by biting on a cyanide capsule. A third report said that Mr. Babbar was shot by the police after his capture.

In the last 10 years, thousands of people have died in the rebellion by militant Sikhs in the Punjab, where dissidents and security forces have engaged in increasingly brutal actions, often trapping ordinary citizens in the violence.

Mr. Babbar was the president of the Babbar Khalsa International, the best armed, most feared and most powerful of dozens of the militant groups in Punjab State that are fighting for an independent state for Sikhs, known as Khalistan.

"There is a realization that the movement for Khalistan has done more damage than good to Sikh interests," said Kanwaljit Singh, the secretary of one faction of the Akali Dal, the mainstream Sikh party.

Punjab's police chief, Kanwar Pal Singh Gill, said security forces had seized the initiative in the confrontation with the militants after the slaying of Mr. Babbar and several other militant leaders. But in the past the militants have been able to regroup in the face of such police successes.

"It does not mean that terrorism is ending but we have succeeded in bringing about substantial containment," Mr. Gill said in an interview at his heavily guarded home in Chandigarh, the state capital, about 70 miles south of here. Mr. Gill, a veteran of anti-insurgency campaigns in India's northeast, said that security successes had left many young militants leaderless.

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Kuldip Singh Sibia, who was a key figure in the Babbar Khalsa International and organized financial support for the group out of Britain, acknowledged that the militants were feeling the pressure. Mr. Sibia, a British citizen who surrendered to the state authorities this month, told a reporter that major militant leaders wanted to negotiate a settlement of their demands.

Chief Minister Beant Singh, the state's top elected official, said he was prepared to talk to the militants if they would surrender their weapons and agree to a settlement within the Constitution. No group has yet responded positively to his demands, although Mr. Sibia said that the militants were under pressure from followers to negotiate.

Mr. Sibia said that he slipped into India from Nepal after traveling first from Bangkok to Pakistan and then to Katmandu.

He said he had been authorized by Babbar Khalsa International leaders and Pakistani intelligence officials to organize new routes for smuggling arms to the Sikh groups. Pakistan has denied Indian allegations of armed assistance to Punjabi and Kashmiri militants.

The election of a Congress Party Government in the state last June ended nearly five years of rule from New Delhi. The party, which also governs in New Delhi under Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao, won the state elections despite a boycott called by the militants. Most of the Akali Dal groups and Sikh voters stayed away, making the Congress victory easier.

"The level of terrorism has dropped to 50 percent of what existed before we came to power," said Chief Minister Singh. Mr. Singh, a white-bearded Sikh who wears sunglasses even indoors, said that "the political process has been restored."

Fear, too, is easing in some parts of the state like the Patila ragion where, for the first time in years, cars and trucks travel the the highways at night.

A version of this article appears in print on August 31, 1992, on Page A00005 of the National edition with the headline: Punjab Violence Eases as Police Claim Successes. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe